Message from OUTBACK RIDERZ NEW HEAD COACH!

Sep 21, 2012

Dear Freestylers!

As a child I grew up in the “Big” city of Timmins. If you’ve been there before, you’d know that there isn’t much to do, so I got involved with sports. I started off playing hockey and soon realized, when forced to choose, that skiing was my biggest passion. I was 11 years old when I began freestyle skiing with moguls and aerials.

Being as far away as I was from all the events, I was forced to travel often to participate in different ski circuits. At the age of 16, I moved to Barrie and lived with a friend’s family to be able to ski for the Ontario Freestyle ski team.

After two and a half years of being on the Ontario team, I entered my first big park and pipe event and was lucky enough to win, which made my decision to leave moguls and dedicate all of my time and passion into park and pipe.

I ventured to Quebec and entered a semi-pro event and won. Just like that - my professional ski career began. During this exciting and extraordinary time, I was travelling around the world and was lucky enough to be able to live the skiers dream, through payment by sponsorship, photo/video shoots and competition.

The whole experience was a lot of hard work, challenges, fun times and amazing memories. Unfortunelty, due to injury my career was cut short. Being forced to come home from out west for surgery, I decided to return to school and took Ski Resort Management at Georgian College. Once I recovered from surgery, I had the amazing opportunity to coach the Ontario Park and Pipe team, which then lead to six years of coaching a Freestyle Ski Club.

Even though I was no longer able to ski at the same level as before, I was still able to pursue a career in the sport and continue my passion in the ski industry. Being able to teach and guide others has proven to be as equally rewarding as it was to win a competition or be featured in a magazine.

I’m so unbelievably excited to start this new chapter in my life with Mount St. Louis Moonstone and be able to watch a program such as this grow and develop from the ground up. I intend to put 110 percent of my knowledge and passion into the success of this program and feel extremely lucky to have the unbelievable support of the incredible management and staff at MSLM.

Hopefully one day my new son Brayden will become one of the Outback Riderz and part of the Mount St. Louis team and family.

I look forward to meeting and working with all of the coaches, children and their families. I sit in anticipation waiting for this season to begin and future seasons to come.